Two week old chicks - male or female?

Roberta_z5(Z4/5 IL)May 12, 2006

If they can sex day old chicks, I should be able to tell what sex my five Barred Rocks are. We started with 8 of them -- four cockerels and four pullets. We now have five left that are two weeks old. I am really wondering what they are --- we really only want two roos, but what we have is what we have.

Barred Rocks aren't one of the breeds that can be sexed by different colors or handy little spots on their heads, unfortunately. Luckily they DO have upright combs, so the little roos will start showing their headgear before the girls do. You'll have to do some chick-to-chick comparisons in your batch. I've come across some male/female characteristics in chickens in general that might help, rather than retype it here I'm going to put in a link to my chicken page:

Day old chicks can be easily sexed by a very experienced, trained professional because at one day old the 'equipment' is right there and obvious. :) After they get a day or two older it becomes difficult, if not impossible.

One thing I've found in barred rocks (and this may be in Velvet's link) is that the males are more of a silver color. Once they start to feather out a little bit you should really notice a difference.

In general (this is in all chicks not just BR), I've also noticed that there is a difference in the size of their shanks. If you compare them across the board you'll notice the cockerels have thicker shanks.

Barred Rocks have the sexlinked, incompletely dominant (B) gene. Day old chicks can be sexed by the white spot on the head, females have a much smaller and narrower spot than males. The feathers are black with white bars and the males(BB) will have wider white bars than the females(B). Show stock also has a slow feathering gene(K^s) to assist in a more clear pattern. It is also referred to as cuckoo barring. This gene also inhibits color so the females with 1 gene will have darker shanks(legs) There is an autosomal barring gene(Ab) also, as in the silver and gold pencilled Hamburgs.